Skills that were sharpened inside the Derry borders over a series of duels with neighbours Bellaghy enabled Ballinderry to slice their way through the best in the country on the way to the All-Ireland Club Football Championship in 2002.
Andy Watters recalls an unforgettable season for the Shamrocks in conversation with Adrian McGuckin junior, the man who lifted three cups in that campaign...
The Breakthrough
IT’S a dozen miles from Ballinderry to Bellaghy as the crow flies (not that crows from either parish are encouraged to fraternise).
Around the turn of the millennium, the auld South Derry enemies met three times on-the-trot in hammer-and-tongs county finals. With barely a kick of the ball between the sides, Bellaghy won the first two meetings and the second of them led to an Ulster title.
Despite the losses, relentless Ballinderry kept bouncing back and so the battle lines were redrawn in 2001…
AMcG: “The rivalry was really fierce but it never really spilled over into anything nasty – there was genuine respect for each other.
“A lot of the boys would have played in underage Derry teams and school teams, or worked with each other so we knew each other well.
“They were going for four in-a-row in that third final and they were Ulster club champions from the year before so it was now-or-never for us and if we’d lost again I don’t know if we’d ever have come back.
“But at the same time we knew how close we were and we had seen them go on and beat Errigal Ciaran to win Ulster. So we knew, we knew that there wasn’t more than a kick of the ball between us and a couple of tweaks here and there would sort us out.”
The man with the plan
LUCKLESS Damian Barton had been the manager for the first two finals and Brian McIver – manager of the last Ballinderry side to win the Derry title in 1995 - returned for a second spell with the Shamrocks for that 2001 campaign.
AMcG: “Brian coming in added a bit of freshness.
“A lot of us boys who were on that team – myself, Gerard Cassidy, Enda Muldoon… would have been 17-18 in 1995 and my brother Ronan and Sean Donnelly would have been 19. So it was a very young team and Brian had taught a lot of the lads in St Pius’s (St Pius X College, Magherafelt).
“He gave us that confidence, that belief that we could beat anybody and I think that’s his best trait. Damian had us for the previous years and we loved Damian, he is well thought of around Ballinderry and he was really unlucky not to get us over the line but the change of voice and the change of atmosphere worked.
“He had a good backroom team – Terence McGuckin, Raymond Wilkinson and Dessie Ryan and he told us: ‘We’re going to do it this year, we’ll beat them; we will beat them!’ We believed we would and that’s the way it panned out.”
A Magic Moment
DECLAN Bateson’s goal put Ballinderry a point ahead with 10 minutes to go and it turned out to be the last score of the 2001 Derry Senior Championship final.
The Shamrocks manned the barricades and lady luck smiled on them as Bellaghy efforts hit the upright or drifted wide as they pushed to get back on level terms.
AMcG: “People would say we deserved to win the two we lost more than the one we did win!
“We had three finals in that campaign – Derry, Ulster and the All-Ireland – but I’m sure if you asked anybody on the team they’d say that winning Derry stands out. It was a mixture of euphoria and relief that we had eventually done it.
“It’s my best memory in sport – the feeling that I had afterwards… I never felt it since.”
A Turning Point
THE new Derry champions were drawn against St Gall’s, an emerging force from Antrim, in the Ulster quarter-final. Perhaps still feeling the effects of their celebrations, the Shamrocks’ season was hanging by a thread when they fell six points behind. Just before half-time a St Gall’s player broke through their defence and found himself one-on-one with ‘Mickey C’ (Mickey Conlan).
He elected to chip the Ballinderry goalkeeper and time stood still as the ball drifted just over the bar.
AMcG: “If it had ended up in the net we were gone.
“But we went straight down the field and Declan Bateson, who scored some very important goals for us throughout that season, scored a goal to bring it back to four. We actually took the lead late in the second half but the ref gave them a free and Sean Burns, a brilliant dead-ball kicker, scored from about 55 yards off the deck, over the bar.”
The replay in Maghera a typical, dogged Ulster club game that finished 0-8 to 0-6.
AMcG: “We knew coming out of that game that St Gall’s were a bloody good outfit.”
Forward Power
THE eight points Ballinderry posted in that quarter-final were split evenly between Conleith Gilligan and Gerard Cassidy. Those two made up a third of what was a top notch club forward unit.
AMcG: “In that team we had five free-scoring forwards – me being the sixth!
“We could have got scores from anywhere – if Gilligan or Cassidy was having an off-day, there were other boys to step up but to be fair to them, more often than not they produced the goods. We played 11 games to win the All-Ireland and Conleith got man of the match in seven or eight of them. He had an incredible season.
“Darren Conway was an unsung hero. He was an absolutely class player but he didn’t play for Derry, he had invites but he didn’t fancy it. If you ask anybody from Ballinderry, Darren would be in their top four or five players ever - he was that good and he was one of these boys who did it on the big days.”
The final countdown
IT was Conway who eased Ballinderry into the Ulster final with 2-2 against Cavan Gaels.
Mayobridge – familiar foes during that era – were their opponents in the provincial decider on a calm and sunny November Sunday at Casement Park.
The Down champions had a team packed with quality performers including up-and-coming Benny Coulter, veteran Mickey Linden and talents like Ronan Sexton and Michael Walsh.
But, in the era of man-to-man marking, Ballinderry were well equipped for them - Niall McCusker picked up Linden, Kevin McGuckin (Adrian’s cousin) marked Sexton and Paul Wilson kept tabs on the dangerous Coulter.
AMcG: “Paul was your go-to man for a marking job and he seemed to have the Indian sign on Benny.
“In the games we played against them, he snuffed him out which was massive because if you’re keeping him quiet you’re well on your way.”
Ballinderry held off Mayobridge to win 1-10 to 1-7 and the club’s second Ulster title meant that a number of players equalled what their father’s had achieved 20 years previously.
Pat McGuckin, Kevin’s father, had captained the 1981 side, while his brother Adrian McGuckin senior, father of Adrian and Ronan, was player-coach/manager. Enda Muldoon and Darren Conway and James Conway also followed in their fathers’ footsteps.
AMcG: “Like any club, you grew up hearing about what your da had done.
“They were the three in-a-row team of the early ’80s that had won the Ulster club and we wondered would we ever be fit to emulate them? It was always something that spurred you on that you really wanted to achieve and it was only the second time the club had won Ulster so, as you can imagine, it was massive. The celebrations and all were brilliant but we had to travel to London for the All-Ireland quarter-final a couple of weeks later so we had to start thinking about playing Tir Chonaill Gaels).
“We didn’t want to slip up over there (at Ruislip) and I always think it’s only a matter of time before somebody does.”
Ade Akinbiyi
CHANCES are you’ve never seen Adrian McGuckin and former Leicester City striker Ade Akinbiyi in the same sentence before but they had something in common 20 years ago.
Akinbiyi was going through a dry-spell in the Premiership and McGuckin had gone through the Derry final, the two St Gall’s games and the Ulster semi-final without raising a flag.
AMcG: “The boys were calling me ‘Big Ade’ because I hadn’t scored.”
He was the architect of so many scores in that campaign but he’d ended his personal drought with two points against Mayobridge and then 1-2 at Ruislip as the Derry champions took care of business with a 14-point win.
AMcG: “I remember being incredibly nervous before that game.
“They went into an early lead, they were three points up and then they got a penalty. Mickey C saved it and after that we took control and ran out fairly easy winners.”
The ’New Year
WICKLOW champions Rathnew had shocked star-studded Dubliners Na Fianna (Dessie Farrell, Kieran McGeeney, Senan Connell, Des Mackin, Jason Sherlock…) to win that year’s Leinster title.
After spending Christmas with two trophies under the tree, the Ballinderry squad regrouped in early January to begin preparations to meet them at the All-Ireland semi-final stage.
AMcG: “There’s a lot said now about condensing the year and getting everything played in the calendar year but the two months we spent getting ready for the All-Ireland semi-final and final were one of my most enjoyable times in football.
“We played Rathnew in Longford and football should never have been played that day. The game should have been abandoned – the weather was terrible and the pitch was a quagmire. When we arrived and saw the state of the place, we were hoping the game would be called off but Rathnew wanted it to go ahead.
“They were begging the referee to play it and we were begging him not to play it! Anyway, it was played and it was one of our best-ever performances – we were brilliant that day. Gilligan was class, he was just gliding over the water, big Enda in the middle of the field… Again, the euphoria of it! Winning an All-Ireland semi-final and realising you were in the final… Great times.”
A new whistle and flute
FOR the first time ever, men, women and children from Ballinderry, the parish on the shore of Lough Neagh, looked forward to the All-Ireland club final.
AMcG: “Brian McIver managed it all brilliantly.
“There was no such thing as locking us all away and telling us not to get involved in the hype.
“He told us to embrace it. I remember journalists landing down to our trainings and Brian would pick two or three of us and send us over to chat to them! He said: ‘This is all part of it, embrace it and take it all in’ and, when you look back, it was great management.
“Our pitch was a mess because we had been training on it all year so we went round the neighbouring clubs and trained on their pitches. We got new tracksuits and new suits and all… As young fella, I was just loving it.”
Semple Minds
WITH the builders in, Croke Park was unavailable so the final was moved to Semple Stadium in Thurles, the Tipperary town in which the GAA been founded in 1884.
Nemo Rangers were the opposition. The previous year the Cork and Munster champions had lost to Mayo’s Crossmolina by a single point and, with experience on their side, they were tipped to see off the Ulster rookies who had to travel three times as far for their shot at immortality.
AMcG: “Part of you was disappointed not to play at Croke Park but there was something very special about going down to Thurles.
“Nemo had played in the previous final so they would have had that experience of Croke Park we wouldn’t have had which might have given them an edge.”
The final score, Ballinderry 2-10 Nemo 0-9, perhaps flatters the Derry men because the final was nip-and-tuck and was finely-poised at 1-7 to 0-9 in the 49th minute.
AMcG: “We were a point up at half-time against the breeze and at the start of the second half we were kicking points from everywhere, playing really well, and then Nemo just took control for about 15 minutes.
“We couldn’t get our hands on the ball and they looked like they’d kick on and win it.”
But Ballinderry found a second wind. They broke up the field, Declan Bateson dispossessed the Nemo full-back and Adrian fed the ball through to Gerard Cassidy who blasted it into an empty net. The fat lady was warming up from that point on and the final whistle was the signal for yet more joyous scenes.
AMcG: “It was totally different to the Bellaghy county final and the Ulster final.
“The Bellaghy one was people running everywhere but that one was more like: ‘We’ve done it!’ It’s a bit corny now when you think of it but the first person I saw was my brother out on the pitch and he walked over and hugged and started crying! It was different.
“They didn’t let the supporters on the field so it was just the squad and the management but after the presentation we met the fans in the stand and they are great memories. After that we headed to the changing rooms and all these new suits were hanging up so you knew there was a good week lying ahead of you!”
Looking back
THE Shamrocks defended their Derry crown later that year but Tyrone’s Errigal Ciaran dethroned them in Ulster. Ballinderry did return to Ulster deciders in 2006 and again in 2008 but ran into a black and amber juggernaut from south Armagh.
AMcG: “We had a team that might have won another All-Ireland or two but like a lot of teams – we came up against that Crossmaglen side. They beat us in a couple of Ulster finals and went on to win the All-Ireland.
“But to get your hands on one was amazing and to be captain was just… extra special. A lot of the boys are still living around Ballinderry and giving back to the club with their own lads coming through so there’s shoots of hope coming. It might take a few years, but we’ll be back…”
